


So Fragile

by hippydeath



Series: Just a Pawn [2]
Category: King Arthur (2004)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-26
Updated: 2009-04-26
Packaged: 2017-10-28 19:54:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/311592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hippydeath/pseuds/hippydeath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Gawain had been gone five months, Igraine in the world for two, when Guinevere sought Galahad out, daughter in the crook of her arm and asked him to ride with them. Galahad swallowed back the apprehension and agreed.</i> Galahad continues to know more than he wants, Gawain runs away and Guinevere thinks they're all idiots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Fragile

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to 'The Queen and I' and was written for the 2lineschallenge community over on LJ. My two lines being _"if she remembers, she hides it whenever we meet / either way now, I don’t really care."_ , which I think is still sort of thematic in there, maybe. Anyway, I should probably warn that there is a lot of swearing in here, a slight lack of logic, and a baby. And that this ran away from me and turned into some kind of monster

Galahad watches. It feels like that’s all he ever bloody does these days. Watches the walls, watches Bors’ children, watches the idiot Romans and landowners have political pissing contests, watches Guinevere get bigger, watches Gawain slowly send himself crazy.

Bors’ children aren’t really trouble to watch; they fight each other, and the younger ones come crying sometimes, but they’re easily soothed. The Romans and the landowners just wind themselves up, and Arthur starts shouting, and if it weren’t so important that everyone got on, Galahad would probably spend half of his time in hysterics at their actions. The walls are quiet these days. The odd envoy arrives, usually bearing gifts for Guinevere, or to see Arthur about a possible further Saxon threat, but it’s nothing that any of them really worry about. Guinevere gets bigger and more impatient for the baby to be born, and every one learns to keep well out of her way for the most part. And Gawain, well, he’s the real problem, even though the dolt should be big enough and old enough to know better.

“What were you expecting?” Galahad holds the majority of the annoyance out of his voice. Just. Gawain shrugs and carries on cleaning his tack. “You told me, you promised me, that after you had her, you were done with her.”

“But the child…”

“Will be Arthur’s. Whether it actually is or not, doesn’t matter. It has to be his.”

“She won’t even acknowledge me unless she has to.” Gawain hauled his saddle off the stand and on to the rack it was normally stored on. “She still talks to you.”

Galahad pulled Gawain’s shoulder so they were facing. “I didn’t trail after her for months on end, ignore her when she tried to court your friendship, and then fuck her like a tavern whore.” He was fully expecting the punch and took it, then swung his own fist at Gawain’s gut, knocking the air out of his lungs. “You’ve done nothing to deserve her acknowledgement Gawain. You were a knight, and not even that now the Roman’s are gone.”

“What have,” Gawain got his breath back and lunged at Galahad, pinning him down, “you done to deserve acknowledgement?”

“I haven’t treated her like she’s about to break every time I go near her.”  
Gawain shoved his harder against the ground and pushed himself up and out from under Galahad.

“Nor do I.”

“No, you stammer and wince, just as bad.” Galahad twisted so he could sit cross legged on the floor. “Do you make sure that you talk with every woman you bed?”

Gawain had nothing to say to that, and stormed from the stables, kicking up a trail of dust and straw.

Galahad smacked his palm down on the floor and sighed, not bothering to follow after the other knight.

 

It took a week for Gawain to come to a decision, which he sprang on Galahad early one evening. “I’m leaving.”

Galahad was probably less shocked than he should have been, but he knew Gawain, knew what he was like. He looked sideways at Gawain, “That’s not the sensible thing to do, you know that?”

“I know, but.” Gawain actually looked as though he’d put thought into this plan, rather than fleeing blindly. “I need to be away for a while.”

“You mean until after she’s had the child?” Galahad asked in a lowered voice, Gawain replied with just a slight nod of his head.

Galahad snapped at that point. “Keep running then Gawain.” He stepped in front of the other knight, “Might be best though if you stop looking back.”

Gawain shoved past him. “Maybe that’s what I intend, maybe I’d finally had enough of this place.”

“You really think so?”

“I don’t know, Galahad.” Gawain raised his voice, then quickly lowered it when the people passing started to stare. “What would you do, honestly? Don’t try to tell me you wouldn’t panic a little.”

Galahad sighed. “Then I’d go and beat you senseless in the sparring ring, not run around fretting like a terrified Roman and go running as far away from the problem.”

“I doubt that.” Gawain replied, and walked round Galahad, leaving him speechless once again.

He sat in the tavern for the rest of the evening, staring at a constantly half full tankard and refusing to get drunk. He’d beat the crap out of Gawain in the morning and hopefully that would be the end of it.

When he finally retired to bed, the lamps in Gawain’s room were gutted, which was rare given how it wasn’t that late, but Galahad thought nothing of it and fell into a restless sleep.

 

He was gone the next day, which shocked Galahad, and annoyed him somewhat. Knowing that he would be leaving was one thing, but he hadn’t expected it to be so sudden, not from Gawain, who generally thought things through carefully, but life continued on without him. Galahad missed having someone to talk to, to spar against, even argue with. In the sixteen years that they’d known each other they’d rarely been apart more than a couple of months.

The six months that Gawain stayed away for were long and lonely, made worse by the cold and isolation of British winters.

Guinevere gave birth, and though they gain a potential heir (though the remaining Romans still clamour for a boy child) they came perilously close to losing their queen. Merlin arrives in time and works some kind of miracle, and Guinevere is back up on her feet sooner than any dared to hope.

The child, Igraine, has Guinevere’s sharp features and a shock of dark hair which Galahad chooses to take as a good sign.

Gawain had been gone five months, Igraine in the world for two, when Guinevere sought Galahad out, daughter in the crook of her arm and asked him to ride with them. Galahad swallowed back the apprehension and agreed.

 

“The Roman physician Arthur insists on keeping continues to tell me I should never ride again,” she told him when they were half an hour gone from the wall, with Igraine strapped to Guinevere’s back sleeping peacefully. “They say I’ll never have another child if I do, but Arthur has an heir, so why should they care?”

“But a son, surely?” Galahad ventured, feeling very much like he was being tested.

“Would become a puppet to them. They’ll have nothing to do with the raising of a daughter apart finding her an idiot husband who they can control, while she’ll be able to rule free from them.”

“They’ll never allow it though.” He thought back to the old ways he’d heard of from his own people, and how, even now, they’ve not regained their former pride, many of their ways lost to time and their conquering masters.

“My people will force it if they have to. The Romans are leaving anyway, and my people have had queens far stronger than any king.”

Galahad felt that pushing it would only land him in trouble, “Time will tell, I’m sure,” he said, and was glad when Guinevere merely nodded, ending that line of conversation.

They reined their horses where the plains started to edge into forest and hill, and sat in the chill winter sun. Igraine started to whimper and Guinevere pulled her shirt aside to feed her.

Galahad respectfully turned his head.

“Arthur is a lucky man,” he started “to have such a healthy daughter. And that you survived.”

“He is. I think he thanks his God every evening for his fortune.” There’s an amused lilt in Guinevere’s voice, Arthur and his God remains one of the few things that Guinevere and the remaining knights agree wholeheartedly on. “Gawain wrote to send his congratulations. You’ve told him it’s safe for him to return now, I’m sure?”

Galahad blinked. He hadn’t known that Gawain had written to Arthur, certainly hadn’t received any correspondence, nor had he sent any. “What makes you say that?”

“He worried that she was his, didn’t he? That’s why he left before she was born. Just in case she came out with blue eyes and corn coloured hair.” Guinevere gave him a look that reminded him why he should never underestimate her.

He stuttered. “He, yes. If it worries him, and he can’t hit it, he runs from it. It’s just the way he is.”

“He’s seen me kill with my bare hands and he still treated me like I would break. Even when we…”  
Galahad cut her off, “I don’t want to know the details. He thought, I’m not entirely sure what he thought. But he’s always been one to bed a girl and then never see her if he can help it.”

“He could barely put words together when he spoke to me before he left.” She held Igraine out to Galahad who took her with practiced ease, bouncing her on one knee while Guinevere stretched.

“Just the way he is. He meant no harm.”

“And when he comes back?”

“When he comes back? If he comes back, is more likely.” They both knew that wasn’t true. Even if Arthur would happily set him up somewhere away from the wall, Gawain would miss them, miss the bonds forged in too many years of fighting to never return.

Guinevere looked somewhat sceptical. “How will he act?”

Galahad considered. “In public, I don’t know. Back to how he was before,” he stressed the before, to mean before the two of them shared a bed, before all of this started to turn on its head. “In private, no doubt I’ll have to watch him drown himself in wine and bed a score of women by means of expressing his relief. That or, Gawain doesn’t talk, so I’ll do the talking and he’ll nod along.” Galahad had no idea why he was being so honest, but something nagged at him, that she deserved it, that she’d gone to Gawain for something, and rather than finding that, she’d been drawn into something that Galahad had spent sixteen years understanding. “Why did you do it?”

She shrugged. “He wanted me, I wanted someone other than Arthur. It made sense.”

“Does Arthur know?” Galahad wasn’t sure which prospect was worse, that Arthur knew and was dealing with it in whatever way he did so, or that he didn’t, and that those three were conspirators against a man to whom they all owed their lives in one way or another.

Guinevere just stopped her movements. “There have been others, for both of us. We weren’t sure if it was just taking time, or if one of us couldn’t have children.”

“There’re bastards out there?”

“Two I think. Their mothers are being looked after, no one will know.”

Galahad was finding it harder and harder to understand exactly what is going on here. What he thought had been a simple seduction is turning out to be a more complicated plot of illegitimate children and the potential for even further bloodshed. “And now you’re willing to risk never having another?”

“Nothing will happen to Igraine.” Guinevere sounded absolutely certain, and Galahad was more than willing to believe her, something just worried at him about the situation.

“What if they find out about who their father is, and come looking for him?”

He was about to say something more, but Guinevere gets there first. “It won’t be a problem, not for many years yet, and when it is, you’ll be at our side, won’t you Galahad?”

“I’ll be at Arthur’s side,” a pointed reminder of where exactly he places his loyalties, but she just nodded, accepting.

“And you’ll be at Gawain’s side when he returns?”

“He’ll only cause more trouble if I’m not.” He handed Igraine back to her when she held out her hands, and watched her strap the baby to her back again. “You have some way of contacting him?”

“I think Arthur knows where he is, if he needs to get word to him for something.”

“I might have a note to pass on, I can’t look after Igraine and Bors’ bastards all on my own.”

Guinevere laughed, and just for a moment, Galahad could almost see what Gawain desired in her, layered over the bloodthirsty killer and intelligent political schemer he knew that she really was. “I hope you’ll make sure she has a better sword arm than Bors’ children do.” Which was saying something, now that Gilly could take Galahad to a standstill before he even reached his fifteenth birthday.

“With Gawain to help me, no one will dare stand in her way when she’s older.” Galahad smiled, and watched her mount before doing the same.

The ride back is peaceful, they talk a little of Arthur’s plans for the future, both of the fort and the wall, and for Britain, and they were almost back to the wall when Galahad reined his horse in front of Guinevere’s, forcing her to a stop.

“Don’t try to force Gawain.” He warned her, and she looked just the slightest bit shocked,

“He’ll be what he wants to be, even if that is an ignorant whoring pig, or even if it does mean he won’t speak to you.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, but I’m not going to stand back and allow him to act in a way that could draw attention, what he’s already done is bad enough.”

“You mean that could make people think there was something between the two of you?”

“Exactly,” she pulled on her reins to guide her horse round Galahad, but he got in the way, again.

“I mean it Guinevere, for his sake.”

“And I mean it, for Arthur’s, and for Igraine’s. Have you thought about what might happen if someone decides that I’d been unfaithful, what they could pressure Arthur to do?”

This time Galahad looked stunned, and Guinevere carried on. “They could force the dissolution of this marriage, and then where would this island be? And they could accuse Gawain of treason, and how would he deal with that? Because it would be true. He has to act as though nothing happened, for his sake as much as mine or Arthur’s or Igraine’s.”

“It won’t be easy for him, he thinks that he’s done the right thing.”

“I know.” Guinevere softened for a moment, “Have that note for him by tomorrow, I’ll make sure that he gets it.” Then she pulled on the reins and sent her horse in to a gallop towards home, while Galahad trotted along behind trying to find a way out of this.

“Better Gawain than Lancelot,” he quietly mused to himself, imagining the chaos that could have been caused had the other knight lived to fully turn his attentions to their new queen.

Galahad didn’t have a chance to speak again with Guinevere for several weeks. He left a scrap of paper with her the next morning, and she assured that it was sent out, but after that, their lives were caught up in the hustle and bustle of early spring, and the next thing he was aware of is that it was coming up to May, and Gawain was leaning against the doorframe to his room.

They embraced, and Gawain made some rude comment about Galahad’s ever lengthening hair, then complained that he hasn’t eaten in almost a day, and let Galahad drag him off to the tavern where Vanora and Bors are shouting, partly at each other, and partly at one of their progeny who has once again been causing trouble. Somehow, it was all so familiar that Gawain easily slipped back into old habits, and the two of them were talking like old times within an hour.

In fact, by the time they stumbled to their beds late that night, it would seem to Galahad’s drink fogged brain as though none of the last year had happened. Other than Gawain asking early on what Galahad thought of Guinevere’s new baby, he never mentioned her, or the incident of the year before.

 

This peaceful existence lasted about a week, including one argument between Guinevere and Arthur, one punch up between Gawain and Bors over something that neither of them can really pin down, and one enforced banquet with Arthur, Guinevere and several apparently important people during which all the women and many of the men coo over Igraine who only cried once, the men asked irritating questions of Arthur and Guinevere treated Gawain with the same easy camaraderie that they’d reached before they’d shared a bed.

And of course in the hours after, when they were all a little worse for wear, away from all the important people and dull conversation, Gawain asked Galahad if Guinevere had spoken of the previous year to him.

“Would it matter if she had?” Galahad slurred slightly, tilting his head back to look at Gawain.

“’s want to know.” Gawain replied with a shake of his head, and Galahad scoffed.

“She said,” he paused, Gawain hanging off his every word, “she said you were shite.”

Gawain raised his fist back to swing at Galahad, but at the last minute saw that the younger man was holding back laughter and instead just cuffed him round the head. “Y’ bastard.” He slured, laughing despite himself.

Eventually, Galahad stopped laughing and straightened himself up, pushing his hair off his face. “She said it never happened.” He said as bluntly as it could, “Because people can’t know, for the sake of the kingdom and all the alliances that are being built.” He patted Gawain sympathetically on the shoulder. “And if you start acting like some love sick boy, she’ll be forced to hurt you.”

Gawain grunted in response and looked around before he pushed himself upright and staggered off in the direction of his room. Galahad watched him go, but didn’t feel like following, instead, he went back to the swarm of people and talked about war and farming and things he didn’t really have a clue about, until he eventually crawled back to his room just as dawn is starting to appear on the horizon.

 

He’d been asleep maybe a couple of hours when Gawain starts banging on his door and ignoring him didn’t seem to work. He swore, sat up, swore again as the room blurred in and out of focus and almost fell flat on his face as his feet hit the floor sooner than he’d been expecting. Squinting against the bright light streaming through the shutters, he staggered to the door and opened it, glaring at Gawain who looked awake and cheerful. He left the door open and assumed  
Gawain would let himself in as he rummaged for a clean shirt.

“So that’s it then?” Gawain asked as he closed the door and leant against it.

Galahad looked at him blankly, “Is that what?” His voice echoed painfully round his head and his mouth felt like he chewed on something utterly unpleasant the night before.

“Guinevere, it’s all done and over?”

Galahad nodded, slowly and carefully. “It was done and over before you ran off, you were just too stupid and pig headed to notice it.” He was being harsh, but his head hurt and he’d not had enough sleep, and really, he thinks that Gawain is old enough and experienced enough to work these things out for himself, surely.

Gawain hummed for a few minutes, and then seemed to brighten up in a way that Galahad didn’t remember seeing in a long time. Gawain’s moods had always been strange, but he hadn’t realised quite how long the other knight had been brooding and worrying until now.

“Sparring? I want to see if Bors is lying about how good Gilly is.”

Galahad winced and pulled on trousers. “Food first. If I can’t have more sleep, at least let me eat.”

Gawain laughed and nodded, waiting while Galahad dunked water over his head and tied back his hair.

They passed Guinevere and Igraine when they leave the room, all smiles and nods, and to Galahad’s hangover fogged brain, it seems that finally, all was right in the world. Or at least the fort.

 

For the time being.


End file.
